Science & Philosophy

Goodreads

Not Following

Meta

Utopia & Dystopia

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.

– Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

Histories of utopias and dystopias tend to treat them seperately (The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, for instance, has seperate entries for ”Utopias” and ”Dystopias”) but I want to look at them side by side, partly because utopian tradition is often satirical but mainly because one writer’s paradise on Earth is usually another’s living hell.

The 19th Century: The Age of the Utopia

Over 100 Utopian novels appeared in the latter half of the 19th Century, most of which have been forgotten. Among the earliest and most successful was Edward Bulwer-Lytton‘s The Coming Race (1871) which became an international best seller.

“Utopian possibilities are inherent in the technical and technological forces of advanced capitalism and socialism: the rational utilization of these forces on a global scale would terminate poverty and scarcity within a very foreseeable future.”

– Herbert Marcuse, ”An Essay on Liberation” (1969) (p.4)

“Isit still necessary to state that not technology, not technique, not the machine are the engineers of repression, but the presence, in them, of the masters who determine their number, their life span, their power, their place in life, and the need for them? Is it still necessary to repeat that science and technology are the great vehicles of liberation, and that it is only their use and restriction in the repressive society which makes them into vehicles of domination?”

When we first arrived, and for twenty years after that, Mars was like Antarctica but even purer. We were outside the world, we didn’t even own things—some clothes, a lectern, and that was it!… This arrangement resembles the prehistoric way to live, and it therefore feels right to us, because our brains recognise it from three million years of practicing it. In essence our brains grew to their current configuration in response to the realities of that life. So as a result people grow powerfully attached to that kind of life, when they get the chance to live it. It allows you to concentrate your attention on the real work, which means everything that is done to stay alive, or make things, or satisfy one’s curiosity, or play. That is utopia, John, especially for primitives and scientists, which is to say everybody. So a scientific research station is actually a little model of prehistoric utopia, carved out of the transnational money economy by clever primates who
want to live well.

Paratexts and Metacommentaries

A common feature of Utopian literature is the paratext or metacommentary. The main narrative in De Mille’s Strange Manuscript found in a Copper Cylinder is framed, or embedded, within the story of those who found the cylinder and interrupted by their comments on the source, meaning or truthfulness of More’s story.